Politely Pushing Back on Reader's Excellent Report

[Wahoo Redux]

So, the good news is that the first page of the reader's report is glowing, talks about the importance of the work, and recommends publication with revision----exactly what I had been hoping for.

English literature monograph, BTW.

And the critique is frighteningly good.  Since my topic is a very small subfield, my list of readers were all the top experts on the subject, and all were very impressive scholars in their own right. I suspect my reader was one of these.

The reader of the manuscript confirmed some of my own worries about the manuscript and went to extraordinary lengths to point out where hu thought I could make elisions, emendations, and rewrites with excellent details----very, very helpful and I am very grateful to them, whoever they are.  The book will be much better thanks to their diligence.  Needless to say, I am humbled by their expertise.

However, the reader recommended several large revisions, most of which I think are very good suggestions, but there are two large revisions which I disagree with.

Has anyone responded to an acquisitions editor and politely disagreed with a reader?  How can I push back politely and respectfully but say that I want to keep my ideas in the book?

Thanks all.  I hope to have a response back by Monday at the latest.

[Hegemony]

Congratulations on the good report. Just politely explain why suggested revisions X and Y are not the direction you want to take the book. Was there only one reader's report? In my experience there are often two. If a second report did not mention X and Y, you can note that and say that these things are obviously something on which opinions may differ, but you thank the reader for their suggestions and will take all of them except for these two.

[Kron3007]

I think you just re-write this post into a response and you are good.  You don't need to accept all recommendations or agree on everything.

[sinenomine]

Yes, you can push back if you have evidence to do so. I just got a similar set of reader reports for an article that's been accepted with minor edits. One reader is questioning some terminology, while the other is fine with it; I'll politely counter that the vocabulary in question is not uncommon, but if it works with the flow, I may toss in synonyms as I make edits.

[Wahoo Redux]

Thanks all.  Great advice.